Blogs and Stories
The World's Brainiest Call Girl
This week a research scientist was unmasked as blogger Belle de Jour, inspiration for Showtime's Secret Diary of a Call Girl. Olivia Cole on a sex scandal's surprisingly happy ending.
After six years of anonymity, Belle de Jour, the ultimate 21st-century blogger, who documented the “Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl,” has been unmasked and dragged into the light—or at least into the popping glare of flash bulbs. With her insatiable appetite for sex, her masochistic tastes, and her frequent and free-flowing discussion of “anal being the new black,” Belle’s blog caused a sensation when it first appeared in the summer of 2003. Belle de Jour made Sex and the City look like Little House on the Prairie.
[I]t “is a terrible indictment of the way that this country values academia that a woman has to turn to whoredom whilst waiting to get her viva.”
She juggled “appointments” with men, and once she was finished raced home to tap away, reporting back to a readership that tipped into the millions. “Have you slept with anyone famous?” is the banal question she was most frequently asked during pillow talk. Since outing herself this week, Belle, or rather Dr. Brooke Magnanti, a 34-year-old born and raised in Florida, with a sparkling academic career in the U.K., is now very famous indeed. Now a Bristol-based research scientist into the effects of toxins on children, she says she turned to prostitution after moving to London from Yorkshire, where her family lived, and finding herself cash-strapped as she tried to finish her Ph.D. Moral relativism, especially for female columnists on Fleet Street, has faced a tough week, presented with a woman so keen on sex she was happy to “get paid for what I would have done for free.” The supposed ultimate male fantasy, of the prostitute who loves her job, according to Belle, really can exist.
Belle was an extraordinary addition to the cast of confessional, first-person, erudite heroines of the last decade, not least Bridget Jones, the diarist in Helen Fielding’s semi-autobiographical books, and Carrie Bradshaw, the fictitious columnist. Myla knickers are to Belle what Jimmy Choos were to Carrie. There is virtually no other story that has had editors, male and female, salivating to know its nymphomaniac author’s identity. Speaking this weekend, she said it was a “perfect storm” of inclination and circumstances that had forced her to break cover: “It was time. I’ve felt so much guardedness and paranoia about remaining anonymous recently… I don’t want this massive secret over me any more.”
Like her life, swimming in her stockings and stilettos through the dark side of London (endless mini-cabs and brief stopovers in expensive hotels), the ensuing circus this week is perfectly of its time. Belle/Brooke is naturally a tweeter. “We went to the Times willingly, after the Mail had their reporters warned off my work premises by the police,” she tweeted over the weekend. Since failing to snag Belle, like a series of quivering rabbits out of hats, the Daily Mail has thus far magicked for its readers a brokenhearted ex about to serve in Afghanistan and Brooke’s father, who, it turns out, blames his own frequent use of prostitutes for giving prostitution a “human face” to his impressionable young daughter.
If ever a woman both embodied contradictory—almost schizophrenic—impulses, it is Belle. The unveiling in the Sunday Times gave us both the Madonna and the whore, the angel and the witchy woman: Hooker-Belle wrapped in black satin like a present on the cover of one section, and on another, Scientist-Brooke looking frankly quite adorable, in a kooky kind of academic way, trotting innocently through the streets, wrapped up in a jersey dress and woolly scarf.
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Paul Schrodt is a writer living in New York City. He has contributed to New York magazine, Radar, and Esquire.com.
Justice Clinton?
As vice chairman of Public Strategies and president of Maverick Media, Mark McKinnon has helped meet strategic challenges for candidates, corporations and causes, including George W. Bush, John McCain, Governor Ann Richards, Charlie Wilson, Lance Armstrong, and Bono. McKinnon is co-chair of Arts & Labs, a collaboration between technology and creative communities that have embraced today's rich Internet environment to deliver innovative and creative digital products to consumers.
London's Dark Underworld
Olivia Cole writes for the Spectator and the London Evening Standard. An award-winning poet, her first collection, Restricted View, was published this fall.
Chris Ofili's Art of Brightness
Olivia Cole writes for the Spectator and the London Evening Standard. An award-winning poet, her first collection, Restricted View, was published this fall.
Pakistan's Fictional Peace
Olivia Cole writes for the Spectator and the London Evening Standard. An award-winning poet, her first collection, Restricted View, was published this fall.
Hippievet
Is everyone speechless or will the assumption be that the first favorable poster obviously participates? OK, I'll go...
I've partaken. It started while in the military and has now been a "hobby" for many years. My favorite GFE was a young lady paying her way through college. She retired from the sex business at the age of 26.
I like to think of prostitution as a victimless crime and I feel it is on my part, but I wonder about the mental welfare of the "ladies". Although with websites dedicated to the industry one may now know a lot about a lady, and her about you, before meeting.
For all those that watch "Hookers at the Point" and think that's what prostitution is all about... you have no idea.
Sajwert
I'm inclined to think that Belle lives in a fairy land that doesn't exist except in her own mind. It may all have been a positive experience for her as she claims. However, it escapes me as to how many thousands of women have gained their advanced degrees without doing in lying on their backs.
gak001
Legalize and regulate - it makes it safer and cleaner. It's going to happen anyway, so why not protect the women and the public health.
longueuilrois
You might get some pushback from the high & low ends of the market. When a business is legitimatized, there's a lot of paperwork that needs to completed, filed and processed. Following mainstreaming, as well as maintaining verifiable records of their financial transactions, the sex workers will need to register and obtain licenses with a government agency. Not only will the sex workers have to pay their fair amount of taxes but chances are their incomes will drop since the stigma of their profession will have been reduced. Yes, the prostitutes will have gain some social advantages but do you really think they really want to give up their anonymity for that privilege and see their un-taxed income drop significantly. There's no simple fix.
gak001
True, but Reno seems to be doing pretty well with all that. And Amsterdam has some of the cleanest, safest prostitutes in the world.
thedailytransmission
Well it was an interesting article until the end. Exactly what do you know of the "desperate reality" Belle left behind? Prostitution is an industry with a hierarchy like any other, it's just we don't often hear the perspectives of middle class prostitutes. And considering 90% of prostitutes work indoors, I've got an inkling they may be the silent majority.
For more read what I blogged about here:
http://www.thedailytransmission.com/2009/11/18/dear-tanya-gold-dr-brook e-magnanti-is-a-model-prostitute/
scotti2az
Considering the cost of education continues to rise I wouldn't doubt that will become more the norm thanks to the academic society.
You go girl.
obedbellex
I'm not a call-girl; I'm an exotic dancer. I'm also getting dual degrees in microbiology and theology. I don't need the money. I do it because I enjoy it; the human interaction satisfies a need for honesty that is otherwise lacking in our daily social activities. Most of the girls I work with also enjoy it... or we'd be waiting tables.
jaderdavila
i sure loved this story
i'm about to get my doctorate
there's an older lady that wants to finance it
but i see that gathering this money little by little
is much more fun
politico83
I don't really get why many people act like its some sort of dirty evil thing to do. I mean really I don't see a huge difference between a prostitute and a trophy wife who gets married and then stays home instead of working for life. Really I would say a trophy wife is just a prostitute on retainer.
What's funny is when you see politicians trot out to rail about the evils of prostitution they often are accompanied by a second or third wife that is a minimum of 20 years younger. "The bible is the literal word of God" they'll say, and "prostitution is a sin" and yet people like the thrice married Gingrich and Limbaugh somehow miss the parts of the Bible where Jesus specifically condemns divorce multiple times.
leahshoes
Thanks for sharing this story with us. When I first heard of the "Diary of a Call Girl" I was very interested to learn more. I was a little shocked when the women's true identity and current profession was revelaed. What's more, the University of Bristol is standing behind Dr. Magnanti, which makes the entire story even more unique. Thanks again for the story, really enjoyed learning more about it!
octavio
Should prostitution be legalized all over the USA? In the USA , crooked republican senators make a great deal of money
being large corporation whores. Should everybody
be allowed to follow their example and become whores?
ligligl
I was asked if I ever paid for it. I replied, "I've been married 3 times. haven't I? Feminists have been fighting for years to turn marriage into a fully-financed date and a step on the ladder waiting for the main chance. They win. Marriage is destroyed and there is no loyalty or permanence. Talk about whores? Let you who is without sin...
cbl99201
It doesn't take much "braininess" for a woman to realize she can live off of men's sexual desires.
Thank you.
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